markmatchwick.co.uk
It was never my intention to be a genre writer. I always believed that it would be a restraint and wanted the freedom to write whatever ideas or stories interested me. There are plenty of writers who have made very successful careers from genre writing, and that's great if it works for them. But the writers I have enjoyed reading and admire typically aren't. My view is that life isn't restricted to one subject or theme or idea, so why should our stories. Life is fantastic, comedic, horrific, absurd, dramatic, romantic, political, adventurous, or multiples thereof, and our stories should reflect this. Of course, you will find romance within a science fiction novel, or moments of humour in a horror story. But if I have an idea for a story, no matter what category it fits into, then I will try to write it.
My current work in progress - following TEST - is the novelisation of the work of an Egyptologist, following four years of his life from eighteen-fifteen to eighteen-nineteen. It centres around another fascination of mine, which is the culture, architecture and theology of ancient Egypt. The story follows one of the first visitors and explorers in Egypt at the end of the Napoleonic wars, and the rediscovery - by the western world - of our civilisation's mysterious and exciting past.
About me
I'm going to start with a cliché. I know! Writers, huh! But I have always wanted to write and, throughout my working life, tended to lose interest in whatever jobs I have had that actually paid bills. And I'm sure I've suffered from all the same setbacks and doubts as anyone else who writes. I self-published my first novel - 'TEST' - just into my forties, which is about a decade after I seriously set about writing. In that time, I've deleted - by accident - two thirds of a completed novel; I've been distracted by an occasional short story that has been on my mind; and I've temporarily shelved a one-hundred-thousand word manuscript - several years of work - to publish a shorter first novel. But, finally, I can say that I'm here.
For me, writing is about characters. Of course the story is important. A writer has to have a point to make, has to have something of interest to tell the readers. But stories are told by characters. Events - in fiction as in the real world - don't happen spontaneously. They happen because people, characters, make them happen. Stories happen - and you only have to look at world events, current and historical - when a cast of brilliant, damaged, unscrupulous, dangerous and talented characters collide. I've read stories with a genius premise, which failed to deliver because the characters weren't there to support it. And I've read stories that seemed, on the surface, to be about very little, but which kept me interested because the characters held my attention. And I've read gems - classic and contemporary - which have the right balance of premise and good characterisation. As a writer, I hope one day to publish one. Or maybe I already have!